Objects of history : the purpose and politics of the British Museum

Talk by Neil MacGregpr, Director of the British Museum, at the British Museum in the first of a series of winter lectures for the London Review of Books.

This was a very amusing event but I did find it wandered around quite a bit. He seemed to spend a lot of time telling us what he was not going to tell us.

However once he got onto the politics of objects and how countries use objects to redefine themselves it became fascinating. The funniest story is how the Scots are claiming back the Lewis chess men when they were made in Scandinavia and were en-route to Ireland when they were washed up on shore in Scotland.

He also talked about the reworking of museum island in Berlin and the plans for a new museum there to reflect Germany’s new unified and peaceful state.

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